I don’t recommend using a Chromebook for local music playback because most Chromebooks don’t come with much internal storage, so your device won’t be able to hold many songs anyway. But if you’re dead set on doing this, Enjoy Music Player is pretty much the only good option for it.

One cool feature is that Enjoy can stream music from Google Drive, so that could be a good compromise for you.

Whereas most activities tend to be harder on a Chromebook, chatting and messaging is actually easier thanks to this nifty app. With All-in-One, you can manage dozens of different messaging services in one place — no longer will you have to juggle several different tabs and windows.

If you need a heavy-duty note-taking solution, you can always resort to Evernote or OneNote. Both are at the top of their game and they both offer web versions that are pretty much on par with their Windows and Mac versions. I personally use OneNote for my big note collections.

But for smaller notes and reminders, I use Knotes. This awesome app has everything going for it: super fast performance, clean and intuitive interface, as well as apps for Android and iOS for mobile access to your notes. It’s simple and it works.

Chromebooks aren’t designed for intense programming so if you’re looking for a powerful text editor along the lines of Sublime Text, Atom Editor, or Visual Studio Code, you might as well stop now because you won’t be satisfied with anything you find. That being said, Caret works in a pinch.

What’s nice about Caret is that it runs completely offline, which can’t be said for most Chromebook apps. It also has the fundamental makings of a serious text editor: tabbed editing, syntax highlighting, full-text search, project view, and a smart command palette. As long as you’re aware that it doesn’t do much more than that, you’ll be happy.

Chromebooks are awesome for writing, but the only downside is that you don’t have access to any of the excellent distraction-free writers available on Windows and Mac. The fact that I can’t use Scrivener or FocusWriter on my Chromebook is a real bummer. Hopefully one day…

For now the closest thing is Writer, which actually isn’t that bad. It works offline so you can write anywhere and everywhere, its colors and fonts are themeable so you can personalize it to your pleasure, it supports word counts and writing goals, and the interface is perfectly minimal.

The app is free but there’s a Pro version with extra features like exporting as an ebook, shareable stats and streaks, exporting to cloud storage, file revision histories, and more.

Photoshop is the image editing king with GIMP coming in as a close second — neither are available on Chromebooks. And even if they were, most Chromebooks don’t have the hardware to support the heavy resource usage that both of them require, so it’d be a moot point for most users anyway.

Didn’t think it was possible to torrent on a Chromebook, did you? I surely didn’t. But as it turns out, there’s a nifty JavaScript-based app called JSTorrent that can handle torrent downloads perfectly, and it works well on newer and older Chromebooks alike.

Chromebooks can take screenshots using two system-level keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + Window Switcher captures the entire screen while Ctrl + Shift + Window Switcher captures a region of the screen according to your selection. These are fine, but what if you need a bit more power?

Then Clipular might be for you. Similar to Greenshot and ShareX (on Windows) or Grab (on Mac), Clipular allows you to capture any portion of the screen, annotate it, auto-save to a location of your choice, sync with Google Drive, and one-click share to social media. A must-have app for anyone who takes frequent screenshots.

That being said, I’m fully aware that Chromebooks are not for everyone. If there’s a specific Windows or Mac app that you absolutely need, then now may not be the time for you to switch. Chromebooks can do a lot, but they still have a bit of catching up to do.

How do you feel about Chromebooks? Are there any apps that you absolutely need before you can even think about switching? Share with us down in the comments below!

Enjoy Music Player can play music on an SD card or thumb drive too, so no worries about storage for local music. You can even create a music folder with a layered structure of artists and albums and it will still scan and play then all.

Another really useful app I've found for writing, is StackEdit. It's a Markdown editor, so knowing some MD syntax won't hurt, but there are button shortcuts for the most common formatting options if you prefer. StackEdit also syncs MD documents with Google Drive and Dropbox - the latter means I can "share" docs between SE and Byword on my iPhone - and it can also publish to services including WordPress and Medium.

One gripe with Pixlr: the Web app adds a HUGE skyscraper ad area, that takes about a quarter of the screen on a typical Chromebook display. If that can't be recovered, I'll have to give Polarr (another image-editor) a decent test...

I've been using Chromebooks for a good 2-3 years now and your summary is good. The one thing that needs adding though is the need for a cloud printer. People often don't realise they can't plug into their USB printer

Since late 2016, Chrome OS has added the CUPS printing system (used in macOS and most Linux distros), meaning you can now connect to most USB and network printers. Last time I looked, you need to enable it by going to chrome://flags and turning on the "native CUPS" option. Hopefully they'll enable it by default soon...

I love chrome book it took a week to get use to it but i find it amazing, light, simple intuitive. The book itself is easy to carry around and with Google is more or less virus free great job . Just hope it last.

If you're a Linux user, one of the first things to check out is Crouton (https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton). You'll need to run your Chromebook in developer mode, but you'll be able to install Linux and use it right alongside Chrome OS, including all your favorite programs.

Later this year, I'll be acquiring my first ever Chromebook - the Samsung Chromebook Pro - inspired in no small part by my fellow gadget man and 17-year-old nephew, who has shown me as how he is currently running Ubuntu Linux (ie: my desktop miniPC's OS) via Crouton on his own Chromebook.

So from 2017 onwards, an Intel-CPU'ed Chromebook will effectively empower me to run THREE flavours of Linux side-by-side: Chrome OS, Android, and Ubuntu - each with their own extensive app ecosystem. Hence I'm very much looking forward to getting all my mobile computing needs and desires met, and in particular being able to use the apps I currently run on my Ubuntu desktop miniPC (a System76 Meerkat) - such as the LibreOffice productivity app suite, GIMP image editor, Vuze BitTorrent client, etc., &c. - on a light-&-portable, Pen-equipped, 2-in-1 Tablet-&-Laptop hybrid device.